Call Of Duty: Ghosts Co-Op Confirmed By Infinity Ward

Call of Duty: Ghosts's selection of multiplayer modes will include some sort of cooperative play. Infinity Ward community coordinator Candice Capen confirmed the existence of a co-op mode over Twitter today.

As you'd expect from an off-hand tweet, Capen's announcement was vague and didn't tell us much about what to expect:

@doyneamite@markderidder we'll have a cooperative mode of sort, but we're not announcing it yet and I've no clue when/if we will

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and Modern Warfare 3, both developed by Infinity Ward, featured a co-op Spec Ops mode. Spec Ops was a series of standalone missions for 1-2 players set in locations culled from the campaign. Players played and replayed these missions in order to get high scores and unlock higher tiers of missions. IW thought highly enough of this mode to use it in two games so I would imagine they'd bring it back for Ghosts as well.

Modern Warfare 3 also introduced a co-op mode called Survival. In Survival, one to four players must defend against waves of progressively stronger enemies. It seems like every shooter ships with a "Horde Mode" like this these days so I wouldn't be surprised to see Survival in Ghosts. However, I'd really love to see Infinity Ward pour their energy into developing a more original and satisfying co-op experience than this. Survival just didn't really add anything to MW3.

One positive thing I'll say about MW3's co-op, though, is that it felt like a key element of the game. Unlike MW2, MW3 provided a full-fledged progression system for co-op as well as online matchmaking. Co-op was still very much the second fiddle to competitive multiplayer but it wasn't just a side feature. It was an essential part of the package.

My hope for Ghosts' co-op is the same as my hope for the game in general. I'm really praying that Infinity Ward takes some risks. Fellow COD developer Treyarch is often derided for not being as skilled as IW but at least they try off-center ideas like zombie co-op and wager matches. I'd like to see a bit of recklessness from Infinity Ward as well. I realize they're stewards of a billion-dollar franchise but if they want the series to maintain that lofty position, they're going to need to mix things up.

Infinity Ward is taking their time with announcing multiplayer details for Ghosts. The first news about Ghosts's online play came last week, when they revealed the Free Fall map for competitive play. The map in question is a skyscraper that crumbles throughout the course of the map. Dynamic map events like this will no doubt play a large role in co-op and single-player as well.